[GavinB]

Having this be a universal policy has a big clear benefit--when someone at the company dies, their family's immediate needs and expenses are taken care of. It avoids the awkward "passing the hat" to the company or fellow employees for support. There's no need to make special exceptions, determine how much to help out in a crisis, etc--it's taken care of automatically, to a pre-determined extent. No one can complain that an employee died and big rich Google did nothing for their family. It saves a lot of potential handwringing, bad PR, and employee dissatisfaction, etc.